<Begin Segment 24>

TI: Okay, so let's... so May, let's get started again, and we're in New York, and we just, you just told a nice little story about Minoru Yamasaki and how you knew him. But let's get back to your life, and you're in New York for a while now, so pick it up again. What, what else did you do in New York? I know that you eventually went to Columbia University, and why don't you talk about that a little bit and how you got involved with that.

MH: How I got there? Well, I was working at this place, and the headquarters of, Congregational headquarters. And I thought, "I don't want to do this for the rest of my life." I thought, "I want to get back to teaching." I've got the heart of a teacher, and I was very anxious to get back to teaching, but nobody would hire me. So then I got to thinking, "Well, people don't hire me because of the way I look, my speech doesn't, isn't any different from anybody else, so it's just my appearance. So if people can't see me, that should never be a problem." So I decided to go up to night school at Columbia, and take a course on education for the handicapped. And so I enrolled and I got in the class, and people were there and some of them were using Braille and some were using hearing aids, and after two, two evenings, the professor called me up and said, "Miss Ota, what are you doing in this room? What's your handicap?" And I said, "Oh, my handicap is being Japanese American." "Well..." so I told him, you know, that it was difficult, I couldn't get a job. And he was appalled. He said, "Oh, my God." He says, "I know exactly who you should meet."

And there, right then and there, after he dismissed the class, he took me down to meet Roma Ganz, Dr. Roma Ganz, who is a well-known professor at, she's at Columbia, she's a reading, was a reading specialist. Very well-known, and she just greeted me with open arms, just a wonderful person. And she said, "Oh, I'd love to have you take a class from me." And she was the head of the Early Childhood Education department. So she greeted me and took me into her class, and I became, became very good friends with her assistant, who later became dean, Dean of Education at Berkeley. Well, Millie Albie said to me, she said, "May, you should have heard Dr. Ganz before you came in." She says, "She told the class that she met the most fantastic person." [Laughs] And that, "You're gonna have so much fun having her in your class." So of course the class greeted me nicely, and they were very friendly, it was a wonderful experience. And they chose me as their class president, and you know, I just lived a very nice life. But I also learned a great deal from Roma Ganz. She was not only an early childhood education teacher, but she was a life education teacher. She taught me so much about life and politics and social issues. That's where I got my main education. It wasn't the early child education that really I embrace as having learned at Columbia, it's this other thing. So she gave me a lot of courage to go out. She says, "Never, never let anybody put you down." She says, "You know your rights, but you have to know your rights. And if you are in the right, then you just go for it. Never let anybody let you down."

TI: Boy, she sounds like she was an extraordinary woman.

MH: Hmm?

TI: She sounds like she was an extraordinary woman.

MH: Oh, fantastic. I wish there were more people like that who had the courage to speak out. So that when I asked you to let me speak, I just felt that this was something that I wanted to contribute, because I do have stories to tell. And being silent is not an asset, is it?

TI: No, I, I agree. And I think it's so courageous for people to share their lives, not only just to me, but to so many other people.

MH: Yeah. I think people should do that. People should do that.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.